from the wow dept

This is definitely a surprise, but it looks like AT&T finally read all the writing on the wall, and realized it was unlikely to win its fight with the DOJ and FCC and has officially killed its plan to try to purchase T-Mobile... meaning that it now has to pay the $4 billion breakup fee. While the trend of where this was heading was becoming increasingly obvious over the past few months, it's still pretty shocking on the whole. Getting big mergers like this through had become pretty standard, and AT&T (especially) excelled at the political dealing to make such things work. However, the growing public outcry and concerns over the lack of competition that would result seemed to finally have had a real impact.

Did they "admit defeat"? Or just lie their way out of it, like they tried to lie their way into it? Claim it was a "business decision" to pull out, or due to some vast government conspiracy, everybody's out to get them, or some such crap.

As for the $4 billion they have to pay DT, another article says that will really only cost them about $1.4 billion after a tax write off.

Someone is Getting Rich

One has to wonder about the legitimacy of the fees associated with mergers, both with success and failure. I seriously doubt that any of the "facilitators" putting this now failed merger into play actually incurred $4B in billable hours or other valid expenses. The shareholders of AT&T should be screaming.

Just as a casual observer, it seems that corporate managers simply play the merger game as a technique of extracting the corporate wealth into their own pockets. I have no proof, but I have observed too many corporate mergers that seem to fail the smell test.

Re:

Being a X-Employee of AT&T I have to say this is good for customers of T-Mobile. AT&T cares only about one thing. $$$$ They don't care about their employee and they certainly don't care about their customers.

Blast

Re: Someone is Getting Rich

I think there is more to it than that. Going though a merger you have to expose a lot of your inner workings to each other and part of the fee would be TM's perceived loss after giving AT&T such a close look at their business.

Re:

I think people are downplaying the significance of the huge early-termiantionf ee AT&T will be forced to pay. Four billion?!! I mean, that's gotta be, like, almost as much as the ETF AT&T will charge me for breaking my contract early. (I think it's in the fine print there somewhere.)

Nothing they do seems to limit public outcry

Like where will they make up this $4B if that is really a true cost to them? From the public, that's where. They will in all likelyhood lash out with higher prices for smaller candy bars, that's all. Greed goes against the public good when they do not tell customers of usage overage commits and charge an unconscienable amount for them. Still, they waited for legislation against that practice before they stopped.

Don't forget...

Don't forget at&t has to give t-mobile a wcdma (HSPA) roaming agreement with t-mobile usa now! HUGE expansion of 3g and higher coverage now with t-mobile! As a t-mobile customer with all my phones supporting all of at&t's 3g and HSPA+ bands, im thrilled!